LONDON — OUTA’s founder Wayne Duvenage and I are of the same vintage. We grew up in the same part of Newcastle, a small town in northern KZN, and attended the same high school. I even dated his sister for a few months. So it’s hardly surprising I’m one of the biggest fans of Wayne’s extraordinary successes in fighting the scourge of corruption in our native South Africa. His packed diary meant we were unable to see each other on my trip to the country last week. But yesterday we caught up on the phone where he shared ambitious plans for expanding SA’s crime-fighting phenomenon.

What got you into it because I remember you as a young guy being anti-establishment, I suppose is a polite way of saying it? You never really accepted authority just because people told you to do things. Is that something that goes through the genes?

It does. I was asked this question a couple of times and I had to think back and you’re quite right. Just going right back into one’s’ youth I certainly was somebody who challenged the status quo and questioned in my family discussions and debates at home as a youngster about religion and race, and so many different topics. I could see that the journey for me being somebody who didn’t just accept things the way they were. So, if it was irrational or if it didn’t make sense – I needed to make sense of it so, it’s been there from the beginning from one’s’ youth. All the way to varsity and into the corporate world and as a youngster growing up in the corporate world at Avis, I think that that approach enabled me to grow quite quickly into the management space because when you question, and you challenge the status quo you actually bring about change a lot faster than what would have been the case, and that’s what you need to be innovated and to grow and to lead in certain industries.

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